Andrew P. Roach, James R. Simpson

Scholars and analysts seeking to illuminate the extraordinary
creativity and innovation evident in European medieval cultures and
their afterlives have thus far neglected the important role of
religious heresy. The papers collected here - reflecting the
disciplines of history, literature, theology, philosophy, economics
and law - examine the intellectual and social investments
characteristic of both deliberate religious dissent such as the
Cathars of Languedoc, the Balkan Bogomils, the Hussites of Bohemia
and those who knowingly or unknowingly bent or broke the rules,
creating their own 'unofficial orthodoxies'. Attempts to
understand, police and eradicate all these, through methods such as
the Inquisition, required no less ingenuity. The ambivalent dynamic
evident in the tensions between coercion and dissent is still
recognisable and productive in the world today.